It was a jarring episode. He was used to looking down on that coastline, whether in daylight or darkness, and searching for his own home; not the exact house of course, but the general area, in the center of the bay, at the edge of the city’s apparently unbounded sprawl. It was one of the few safe mooring points of his life, the knowledge that Marie was down there, waiting for him. Except that she hadn’t even been born yet, and if he couldn’t get back to her, he’d most likely die before she was. Then their son, Jed, would never be, which seemed even more upsetting than having lost him off Taiwan. The sorrows and consequence of this fucking insanity twisted in on themselves like a snake devouring its tail.

“Admiral Kolhammer? Sir? They’re coming.”

Kolhammer shook his head and consciously pulled out of the dark well of self-absorption. He reminded himself that the woman in the rear seat had left behind two daughters, aged three and five. The Raptor was named for her firstborn, Condi.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said. “I think I’m getting too old for this.”

“We all are, sir. Little kids and make-believe, that’s what this reminds me of.”

The drumming of boots across the tarmac wasn’t make-believe. A six-man squad was double-timing in their direction with rifles at the ready. They pounded to a halt about twenty meters away. A sergeant called out, “Which one of you is Kolhammer?”

“Over here,” he yelled back, waving a small torch.

The sergeant spoke to a couple of his men, who trotted away into the darkness at the edge of the tarmac. Kolhammer heard the sound of an iron door swinging open and being dropped with a clang. He peered into the gloom and saw the soldiers haul a stepladder out of a pit in the ground beneath the trapdoor.

“Five-star service,” he muttered to Lieutenant Torres.

The noncom waved the men with the wooden ladder over to a spot just below the fighter’s cockpit. It bumped against the fuselage with a dull thud. For some reason the noise sealed the deal for Kolhammer. They were lost forever—of that he was certain.

“Age before beauty, sir,” said Flight Lieutenant Anna Torres with a tired smile in her voice.

Kolhammer swung himself out and over the side. He could see men and women dropping to the ground from the AWAC bird and the refueler.

He took the ladder in three steps, and landed back on the U.S. of A.

It didn’t feel like home.

Nevertheless, Kolhammer was surprised to feel his heart beating faster as they approached the hut. A small cluster of men in dark coats and hats stood in the malarial glow of a yellow lamp at the foot of a set of steps leading up to . . .

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

His heart gave a real lurch.